Monthly Archives: October 2004

I've just posted the rest of the week's images, just over 1,500 today. Thanks to Kokeshiapple being the cover model, and to everyone who sent in pictures (and waited a day longer than usual for them to be posted). Memberships are on their way now…

Debate tonight, but consider checking out this Presidential Q&A as well… which probably has better questions than tonight, although you won't get to enjoy Bush's deranged mannerisms as you read the lies. I love the “the US has the best health care in the world” claim he keeps doing… Isn't America the only Western nation without national healthcare? I suppose some people think that's a “good” thing (not the 45 million Americans with no healthcare though).

To the extent that sexual harassment is “funny” (which it's not), this lawsuit being launched at Bill O'Reilly is really amusing reading… Amusing isn't entirely the right word. Deranged and disturbing… I have no idea if it's true, or if it's a shakedown for cash as he claims, but given everything else I know about him (and the fact that escort and strip club use spikes during the RNC), I'm inclined to believe it for now (but I suppose if you're suing someone for $60 million or whatever, you can hire Rich Little to impersonate their voice for your “taped” phone calls).

Some quotes from Bill O'Reilly c/o the lawsuit:

"What, you've got a vibrator, don't you? Every girl does."

"If any woman ever breathed a word [about what I did] I'll make her pay so dearly she'll wish she was never born. I'll rake her through the mud, bring up things in her life and make her so miserable that she'll be destroyed. And besides, she wouldn't be able to afford the lawyers I can or endure financially as long as I can."

"Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me."

"You'd definitely get two wines into you as quickly as I could get into you I would get 'em into you... maybe intravenously, get those glasses of wine into you... I'd be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples hard, kinda' kissing your neck from behind.... [etc]"

And I thought Britney Spears was the one having the embarassing public self-destruct. Anyway… Here's some fun stuff from my own email file, a series of emails that came in over three quarters of an hour:

Nice picture of travelling “doctor” Howie and his (also travelling) patient Manny when they happened to meet in Barcelona, Spain. That reminds me that I should post a South America update. BME will be at both the upcoming Brazil and Argentina conventions. Rachel and I leave for Argentina on the 26th I think, and BME reporter (and much more — have him take your photo) Allen Falkner will be hitting Brazil. We're all totally looking forward to it; we've been waiting a long time to finally go!

I read an interview with a soldier in Iraq recently who was talking about US military collapse in five years due to the use of National Guard, IRR, stop-loss troops, and so on. For those living under a rock, stop-loss is when you force a person to serve after they've quit, past their normal contract, against their will (that is, a draft, but limited to former soldiers). National Guard and IRR and so on are people who are in the military, but are not supposed to be called for these things except in utter national-security or disaster relief emergencies. So let's think about the math of this for a moment.

Diagram is not even vaguely to scale!

(A) Required troop level to sustain current conflicts.(B) Available troop levels without a draft.(C) Full time volunteer military.(D) Troops available via National Guard and Reserves.(E) Troops available via stop-loss.

The blue shaded area represents an excess of troops (ie. more than are needed, which is good), whereas the grey shaded area represents a shortage of troops (ie. less than are needed, which is very bad).

What I'm trying to show with that diagram is that when you rely on National Guard and Reserves to make up your military and then compound it by using stop-loss orders, you create an artificial plateau, which then drops dangerously quickly. Those of you who've looked at the peak oil charts should understand this risk. This isn't a Republican or Democrat issue. Kerry will have to face this as well. Nothing short of either a large scale draft or a radical rethinking of American empire and American foreign policy can change this inevitable problem.

I'd also like to comment on number re the elections. When you're building a race car, every ounce counts. An ounce may not seem like a lot when you're talking about a car that weighs a few thousand pounds, but races are close enough that a few ounces make the difference. The same is true in almost all elite sports competitions — the margins are that slim. It was the same in the 2000 US election, with the final outcome being decided by margins in the hundreds of people. This might seem odd as well, but think of the race car — the deciding variable is equally small.

What that means as well is that if you pick the right areas to do it in, if you can disenfranchise just a few hundred or a few thousand voters, you can win the US election. Maybe not morally, but, as determined by the Supreme Court, it is “legal”. In Vegas for example the RNC funded a voter registration company which employed three hundred people collecting registrations. Turns out though that the company's mandate was exclusively Republican voters, and shredded registrations obtained from Democrats. Other areas of the US are having similar problems with RNC sponsored anti-voting efforts (more).

To be very clear about this: The Republican party is officially funding efforts to ensure that Democrats will be blocked from voting through highly questionable means.

I realize there are Republicans out there who believe that this is how democracy works, and that this is part of determining which party is “stronger”, but this is not right. Additionally, there's also the Republican intimidation of black voters by having the FDLE raiding elderly voters homes and terrorizing them, purging people who are “potential” felons from the voter lists, banning Native Americans from voting, blocking black college students from voting, threatening of black voters in Philadelphia, distribution of flyers in poor communities with the wrong election date on them, and so on (more). Let me even quote Republican Representative John Pappageorge (more):

"If we do not suppress the [83% black] Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

This is wrong. It's not democracy when the Republican party is doing everything it can to intimidate people who want to vote against it — come on, running advertisements saying that voters who haven't paid their parking tickets or even owe rent payments will be charged when they come in to vote in poor communities (more) and voter fraud on behalf of the Republican party is not what America is about.

Or maybe you think it is?

I suppose if Saddam can keep getting “elected” (yes, Iraq was a “democracy” before the US invasion and occupation), then Bush can too. Can you see me making my sarcastic air quotes as I type this?

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake… We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself.

The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. War is Peace.(Orwell's 1984 if it's not obvious)